Preface

Anxiety seems to be a widespread and universal phenomenon. It includes protective properties against possible future threats and additionally may cause severe psychopathological experiences disturbing an individual's everyday life.

All anxiety symptoms are divided into the subjective and the objective. The first group includes psychologically unpleasant experiences such as fear, emotional worries, feelings of threat, fear of dying, and other similar symptoms. The second group represents somatic complaints, including heart palpitations, dizziness, vertigo, tremor, hyperventilation, breathlessness, and headache. All these symptoms should be considered when treating anxiety and may require different therapeutic approaches.

At present, several so-called independent anxiety disorders exist, and each one is thought to have its own psychopathological structure and pathogenesis. Nevertheless, the level of our knowledge is not sufficient to explain the mechanisms of anxiety's origin in each concrete case. This book is an attempt at clarification.

This book is organized into three sections containing chapters related to multifarious problems of anxiety. In the first section, chapters are related to various social aspects of anxiety. The second section includes data on clinical aspects of anxiety and some other psychopathological syndromes in which anxiety may be evident. It also presents the psychopathology of Capgras syndrome and de Clerambault's syndrome. The third section includes chapters related to neurobiological data and the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders. The section also presents results of immunological and neurochemical studies of some anxiety states.

This book is intended for neurologists, psychiatrists. and physicians interested in anxiety.

#### **Vladimir V. Kalinin MD, Ph.D.** Professor,

Department of Brain Organic Disorders and Epilepsy, Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry—The Branch of Serbsky's National Center of Psychiatry and Narcology of Ministry of Health of Russian Federation, Russia

> **Cicek Hocaoglu** Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University, Turkey

**Shafizan Mohamed** International Islamic University Malaysia, Malaysia

Section 1
